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Nearly 200 massive fires raged out of control across Greece last night, sweeping into mountain towns and villages, trapping hundreds of people and killing at least 41 in the country's deadliest forest fire toll in decades.
Rescue crews were checking reports of several other bodies in a mountain village in the Peloponnese, fire department spokesman Nikos Diamandis said.
Winds gusting to gale force frequently prevented firefighting planes from taking off, leaving mainly ground forces to fight the flames, occasionally helped by helicopters. The strong winds were forecast to continue.
Hundreds of people were reportedly trapped by the flames, many in villages in the western Peloponnese, near the town of Zaharo.
The number of fires burning across Greece was up to 170, Diamandis said. With firefighters stretched to the limit, the military was called in to help.
"We are living through an unspeakable tragedy today," said Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis, who visited Zaharo yesterday. The Government appealed to European Union countries to "send any help they can", acting Interior Minister Spyros Flogaitis said after an emergency meeting of Greece's civil protection authority.
Five hundred soldiers and several military helicopters were to join the firefighting efforts yesterday evening. Dozens of soldiers were already helping battle the flames.
"Our efforts are now focusing on saving human lives wherever there are people trapped, and on limiting the fronts," Diamandis said.
Eleven people, including three firefighters, died in villages near Zaharo, the fire department said. Late in the night, fire crews found the body of a 78-year-old man between two villages and the man's wife was missing. Television crew said they saw the woman's body, but the fire department could not confirm the report.
In another fire, to the north near the town of Amaliada, one more person was found dead, the fire department said.
Across the Peloponnese to the southeast, five people were burned to death near a hotel on the outskirts of Areopolis - including two whose charred bodies were found locked in an embrace. A firefighter also died of a heart attack, Diamandis said. All hotels in the area and part of the town were evacuated, as were nearby villages.
Across Greece, dozens of houses went up in flames. Residents and local officials called television stations with desperate appeals for help.
"I'm one person, all alone in the dark in a blazing valley. I need help," said one man, whom Mega television identified as the mayor of Palaiochori village. It did not give his name.
One woman in the village of Rodina, near Zaharo, told Antenna television that about 20 people, including children, were trapped in the village. "We can see the fire in front of us. It's at our feet. We're choking on the smoke."
On the island of Evia, north of Athens, Styra mayor Sofia Moutsou called a television station to say her entire region was burning.
"I'm appealing for help. There is not an inch of land in the municipality that hasn't been burned," she said.
The country's most dangerous fire was at Zaharo, where the town's mayor, Pantazis Chronopoulos, said he barely escaped. He feared the death toll could increase because several villages were encircled by flames.
Deputy mayor Andonis Krespis, who was injured in the blaze, spoke from his hospital bed. "I counted about seven people dead," he said, adding that the casualties had abandoned their cars and tried to escape the flames through a field, the same way he had managed to get out.
Diamandis said several civilians and firefighters had been injured and were taken to local hospitals, but he could not give an exact number.
Senior health ministry official Panagiotis Efstathiou said hospitals in the region had been put on alert. Television footage showed flames towering above homes on the outskirts of Zaharo, turning the night sky orange.
Greece has suffered its worst summer for forest fires this year, with hundreds of blazes burning thousands of hectares of forest and brushland.
With elections just three weeks away, the fires are almost certain to become a political issue. Karamanlis' Government has already come under criticism for its response to fires that ravaged Greece earlier this northern summer. Ten people, including five firefighters, had died in those fires.
A recent three-day heat wave, in which temperatures have touched 40C, has left forests and shrubland parched, and the flames have been fanned by strong winds across Greece.
